


Waiting on the Porch

by kageygirl



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-17
Updated: 2005-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-19 19:06:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kageygirl/pseuds/kageygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They just wanted to go home, you know," Sheppard said, shifting his gaze back to the night sky. "Not like we can't relate."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting on the Porch

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 2x09, "Aurora."

The last time Rodney had champagne, they had been celebrating their miraculous survival, and the success of then-Major Sheppard's rescue mission. And oh, by the way, they'd just stranded themselves impossibly far from Earth, with a new and morbidly terrifying alien race looking for payback by way of some festive life-force-sucking.

As far as Rodney was concerned, that was reason enough for his mixed feelings about that particular sense-memory. He was almost happy that he'd never been hugely fond of champagne in the first place.

Rodney didn't usually bother to sit around obsessing about past events--not when there were, you know, new things to study or test or theorize about or assemble or disassemble, forward progress to make, explosions and other horrible means of dying to avert. But Sheppard's toast to the crew of the _Aurora_ had produced the unexpected side effect of making Rodney almost... reflective.

Not maudlin, that would be an unfair characterization, but Rodney hadn't actually had champagne since Elizabeth had opened up General O'Neill's bottle at the beginning of the expedition. They'd had a few occasions after that which might have warranted champagne, but they'd either not had any on hand, or been too busy putting the city back together after the Wraith siege, or... well, circumstances had never come together exactly right.

But now, Rodney had the taste of champagne lingering on his tongue again. One bottle split six ways wasn't nearly enough to excuse his mood, though he'd prefer to have been able to blame the alcohol; no, unfortunately, it was nothing more remarkable than a sort of edgy pensiveness that drove him out to join Colonel Sheppard on the control room balcony.

Sheppard was leaning on the railing, staring up at the stars, while the reflected light of the city painted him in a rippling mosaic. For a moment he looked as unearthly as he had under the lights of the virtual _Aurora_.

He acknowledged Rodney with an indecipherable look when Rodney settled in next to him, mirroring Sheppard's stance, but didn't move his arm away when Rodney bumped it with his own.

"They just wanted to go home, you know," Sheppard said, shifting his gaze back to the night sky. "Not like we can't relate."

"Of course. Certainly. Been there, done that, have the scars to prove it." Rodney glanced down at his right forearm, though the Genii knife scar was hidden by his jacket sleeve. It was all but invisible anyway, except under very bright light, at just the right angle.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Sheppard looking at his own arm, too, and winced. He hadn't been thinking--Sheppard's retroviral-infected feeding mark had been in about the same place, though on the underside of his forearm.

Rodney rubbed a hand over his mouth and pretended not to notice, regretting the inadvertent reminder.

Then again, since he'd already broached one uncomfortable topic, he might as well get them all out of the way at once. "I was right, by the way. For the record." Sheppard looked back up at Rodney, eyebrows raised, and Rodney twitched his fingers in a little circle. "About the, uh, about the stasis pods. Being safe, I mean."

"Okay..." Sheppard nodded slowly. "Yes, you were."

He was clearly waiting for Rodney to elaborate, so Rodney said, "You--you still don't trust me. Didn't trust me, I mean." All right, so, it wasn't like--Sheppard had said Rodney would have to work for it, and so far he hadn't--well, molecular biology wasn't his field, and especially not molecular xenobiology, because that field was apparently just completely insane, but--

Sheppard was still staring at him, and--god, it had been a joke, hadn't it, what Sheppard had said on the _Aurora_. Not a joke without teeth, but a joke nevertheless, and okay, Sheppard was talking to him and Rodney should listen now. "Do I trust you to know everything there is to know about an alien machine you've only had a few minutes to fiddle with? No, I do not."

Rodney nodded, folding his hands together and watching his fingers indent the skin on the backs of his hands. "No, that's--fair, I suppose."

"Do I trust you to be able to do something about it if something goes wrong with that alien machine? Yes, I do."

"Oh." Rodney raised his head, but Sheppard was back to being inscrutable, almost alien himself in the shimmering illumination.

"Which is why I need you on the outside of that alien machine when we're testing it. Just in case." Sheppard turned his head, falling into a patch of shadow, and his eyes went oblique and unreadable.

Rodney fanned his fingers apart. "Well, when you put it that way, it only makes sense."

Sheppard settled further against the railing, slouching a little deeper. "Which--for the record--is the only way that you'd be any kind of a greater loss than I would."

"You know, I really didn't mean to imply--I was speaking only in the most hypothetical sense, about resources and, and--well, I certainly don't consider you expendable in an absolute sense, just, in relative terms..." Rodney took a breath and looked out over the city himself as it twinkled on, oblivious to his conversational plight. "I'm going to stop talking now."

"See, you're definitely replaceable in terms of personality." Rodney looked back, and Sheppard tilted his head in some way that made him just be Sheppard again. "Then again, maybe that's what a hot Wraith chick looks for in a guy."

Rodney raised a hand to clarify. "Well, technically, it was the first officer who was hot, since the Wraith was masquerading as her. Well, okay, she was hot before it left her a desiccated corpse on the deck of the ship." He grimaced at the memory of Ronon moving the brittle, uniformed corpse off to the side of the corridor. "So, really, it's not that--" The smirk on Sheppard's face was growing unreasonably fast, and Rodney gave up. "Okay, yes, it still is disgusting. But--you saw her! I'm surprised you didn't put the moves on her yourself."

"'Put the moves on her?'" Sheppard said, with a combination of confusion and distaste, but his eyebrows did one of those things they did, and Rodney felt his face going blank with shock.

"Oh my god. You did. You hit on her."

Sheppard straightened, pushing off the railing with atypical awkwardness. "I--I did not."

"You completely did," Rodney said, pointing at Sheppard as the only possible answer solidified right in front of him, so clearly that he could almost see it. "You tried the 'charm' thing, didn't you? That's--that's why you were in the brig! And then Lieutenant Colonel Judgmental gives me a dirty look. Absolutely typical." Rodney shook his head, wondering why he ever expected anything better.

Sheppard held up his hands. "I didn't do anything except try to reason with her. And, for the record, that was way before I knew she was a Wraith," he said, in the slow, exacting tones of the falsely accused, though Rodney wasn't even remotely fooled. Then Sheppard frowned, correcting himself. "He was a Wraith."

Rodney waved that away. "I'm actually far more disturbed by the Wraith part than the male part."

Sheppard screwed his face up in eloquent distaste. "Yeah, that's really a lot creepier."

"Mmm." Rodney let Sheppard's failed lechery go in the spirit of camaraderie, though he filed away the gender comment for future reference. Sheppard drifted back to rest his hands on the railing again, and they stood in silence for a while--not uncomfortable, but it felt to Rodney as if he, they, were still waiting for something.

He noticed he was drumming his fingers on the rail mostly by the tiny vibrations they made, and he flattened his palms against the metal to resist the compulsion.

That prickle of unease was far too distracting, though, and Rodney had to address it before it consumed too much of his thoughts. "Speaking of the Wraith, it really wasn't any much more difficult to extract him from the system than I'd anticipated--"

"Rodney?" Sheppard's voice was quiet, but the way he was looking Rodney over--assessing him, of course, he had to be--was a little unnerving.

And then his next words threw Rodney for a loop. "I'm not keeping track or anything, you know."

 _Of course you are_ , Rodney wanted to say, but Sheppard sounded so serious and sincere that Rodney had to believe him. He shook his head as he gathered his composure, and adjusted what he was going to say accordingly, though it came out a little too quickly as he overcompensated. "No, of course not--what makes you think I--?"

Sheppard pinned him down with a look. "'For the record?'"

Rodney straightened, hoping the darkness masked the heat rising in his face. "It's a figure of speech."

"Sure it is." Sheppard bobbed his head, watching Rodney for a minute longer, then looked down at his own hands, resting on the rail. He shook his head briefly, then gave Rodney a sidelong smirk. "Just so you know, it's your turn again."

"I'm sorry?"

Sheppard turned to face Rodney, folding his arms, leaving his hip butted up against the rail. "The life-saving thing. I got the Wraith, so you're up next."

"I--" For a moment, words failed him completely, and although Sheppard was the proximate cause of far too many moments of speechlessness, Rodney still wasn't sanguine about them. There was no way Sheppard should have known about-- "Did Ronon say something to you?"

"Yeah, because he's Mr. Small Talk." Sheppard relaxed again--Rodney had never met anyone who demonstrated so many gradations of 'leaning'--and rested his elbow on the railing, his other hand clasped loosely around his forearm. In the process, he'd insinuated himself into Rodney's personal space a bit, but Rodney held his ground on his own patch of balcony.

Sheppard bent his head closer to Rodney, his eyes glinting, and his voice was somehow both ironic and intimate. "Actually, that one I have been keeping track of."

Rodney braced himself--for or against what, he wasn't exactly sure, but it seemed wise--and narrowed his eyes at Sheppard. "You are aware, I trust, that you're an incredibly inconsistent person? I mean, that has to be some kind of systematic endeavor on your part, because I refuse to believe you're as contrary as you are by accident."

"I prefer to think of myself as spontaneous and unpredictable," Sheppard said, looking nothing like either one at the moment, and smirking as if that were part of the joke. "Besides, I've heard that 'a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.'"

"And relying on other people's quotes for wit and wisdom is a sure sign of intellectual desperation," Rodney said. Sheppard gave him a look that could charitably be described as winsome, and Rodney rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I told Ronon it could be his turn next."

"Tough. I'm pulling rank."

Rodney felt himself squinting in his disbelief. "You're pulling rank to make it my turn?"

Sheppard grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck. "Well, Ronon keeps saving my life by shooting me."

"Oh, good point." Rodney tapped a finger on the rail, then pointed it at Sheppard. "If I shoot you, does that I mean I can stop taking my turn?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Sheppard laced his fingers together and gave Rodney a considering look. "Well, you're pretty good at the life-saving thing, most of the time, and I don't like to mess around with what works."

"Oh." Rodney wasn't sure what to say to that, but Sheppard just shrugged and looked back out at the stars. The silence this time was easy, companionable, and the only sense of anticipation Rodney had was the one he always had around Sheppard. The one he'd decided had to be Pavlovian transference, because Sheppard had lit up the control chair, and Sheppard made him think of Atlantis, and Atlantis was--amazing.

A gauzy strip of cloud obscured some of the stars, making them seem to flicker. Without the air pollution of Earth, starry nights here were phenomenal, but Rodney occasionally liked seeing the stars flicker, just to remind him how remarkable the view could be. He could just barely see the hazy smudge of a stellar nursery in the northeastern quadrant.

Sheppard was still standing close, still taking in the night sky himself. Rodney watched his profile, then said, feeling a little awkward, "I... I didn't do the math, but it will take less than forty-two million years for the light from the explosion to reach Atlantis."

An evening breeze brushed over both of them, and though Sheppard didn't move, it almost felt to Rodney as if he had. "Still too long."

Sheppard's voice was perfectly level, and yet, for some reason, Rodney felt his own throat tighten. "We'll keep the lights on," Rodney said softly.

He saw Sheppard swallow, gazing out at the sky, and nod slowly. "Yeah, we will."

Then Sheppard looked over at Rodney, his eyes dark and yet almost lambent in the flickering light, and smiled at him, ducking his head a little. It was a grateful smile, nothing more, but then Sheppard raised his head again, and it--changed.

This was a smile that hinted at lots of things to look forward to, none of them having anything to do with the city, and it made Sheppard look younger, genuine, just like his eager "potential weapons?" smile. Rodney couldn't help but smile back, because-- _look_ at him.

Sheppard touched his shoulder and tipped his head back toward the control room. "C'mon. It's getting cold out here."

It wasn't, not really; the night air was pleasantly temperate, and the breeze was light. But Rodney followed him inside anyway, because being around Sheppard was its own kind of warmth.


End file.
